in pursuit of perfection
by Last Girl Standing
Summary: You never wanted to become this. / Rose, Mom and alcohol. TW: Alcoholism.


**notes:**

**tw for alcoholism. rose & mom centric. uh. yeah. also on tumblr and ao3.**

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i.

When you're little, it's not uncommon to come home to find Mom with a drink in her hand, fingers curled around the thin stem of the glass. You don't wholly understand what's so special about wine or cocktails, why she seems so overjoyed when she's drinking them - but you'll never admit it.

Not knowing something is an admission of failure. You're seven and you know this.

[You also know that it doesn't always make her happy, you know that sometimes late at night sobs echo through the halls, long after you went to bed, leaving the door open a sliver and reading by lamplight. You can imagine her chest heaving and her knuckles white around the stem and her make up smudged.]

[You know that somewhere, she's mumbling your name. _Sometimes_, you think traitorously. _Knowing something isn't always better._]

You listen anyway.

ii.

You get home an hour late, having stayed at school for a meeting about some science club, robotics and math and other things that you think are relatively interesting, but don't plan on joining.

[You didn't want to go home.]

Mom took a 'mental health day', smiling playfully and bumping your hip against her own, winking. You wonder how long it took for her to pour herself a drink, cynically and harshly resounding in your head.

Usually when you get home, she's not there. When she does get home, she's usually sober for a little while, then giggly and happy, doing ridiculous chores that didn't really mean anything. It isn't until you flick off your lights and mostly close your door [but not wholly, out of some masochistic wanting to hear her until you doze off] that something seems to shift in her, that she starts to sob and hiccup.

You walk in and hear your nightly sounds wafting from the kitchen. [They're a lot louder with such little space and nearly no barriers between you two.]

The kitchen door is nearly closed, the door cracked open. You push it open and your chest constricts.

Everything is hot, too hot, but there's a block of ice in your throat and damn it, it's killing you. You'd imagined this sight a million times, every night etched into your brain, but seeing it right in front of you - well. You've always been verbose but you can't explain the feeling that clutches you.

[You can't explain but you can deny the tears trying to spill out of your eyes.]

In movies, they always made crying pretty, defeated little sobs from pretty skinny white girls, whose make up doesn't smudge when she rubs at her eyes and her eyes are clear when she looks up. She hardly sniffles and she doesn't let out defeated cries of despair. They don't show you angry sobs, they don't show you desperation and they don't show you the chokes and shouts.

In books, they've always got something to rub away the tears, whether it be a boy or a best friend or a pillow. Their fingers aren't wrapped around a wine glass and they're not crying because they're a single mother and completely _alone._ Usually, they're crying over some boy, to be honest.

[You've started to notice that you don't look at boys like the girls in movies or books or class do, that your eyes linger too long on the pretty girl's eyes and chest and legs on tv or when the Victoria's Secret modeling thing comes on, but you wont admit it. You're already an outcast. You don't want this. You don't want to be like.. that. Denial, sweetie, is one thing you're good at.]

Mom's got her head in her hand, and her knuckles are white around the stem of a wine glass. The bottle next to her is almost empty. Her make up is almost gone, the rest of it smudged and smeared, and she's sobbing, her lipstick and mascara coated hands occasionally trying to stop the flow but they can't, they can't stop the coarse sobs. You hear your name.

Her hands are shaking. Her nail polish is chipped, and this scene is all too real.

"Rosie?" she whispers "Baby, you're home.. early." Her head is raised, her unkempt hair being frantically combed between her fingers and pushed back [you don't know why she's bothering].

"It's after four," you say, your voice level but strained. "I had that meeting after school. Are you drinking again?"

"I'm just.. tired," there's a soft slur to her voice, a noticeable stutter. You never imagined those details, the little things like the slur or the chipped nail polish. Never, not in your harshest nightmares. "I can stop whenever. I can. I can."

She's not speaking to you. Not really.

"I'm going up to my room," you say, because you don't know what else to say, because if you say anything else it'll come out in a million things you don't want to say, a broken dam of your deepest thoughts; _Mommy please, I love you, stop I'm begging, Mom, Mom please._

"You believe me, Rosie, my sweet Rosie, don't you?" she says, not a question but a plead.

You practically run out of there.

_[coward]_

iii.

It starts with nervousness; a little something to tide you over, because Kanaya's not here yet and your thoughts are driving you insane, edging out all your fears and slamming them against you. You just want a little something. You want a little numbness.

Everything spirals out of your hands after that.

Three days later, you alchemize another bottle.

iv.

You wonder if this is how she felt, if she wanted a little numbness, a little pick me up. You wonder if everything spiraled out of her hands like it did for you, like a house of cards that just collapsed in on itself, a house that weathered the hurricane but was broken by the breeze.

"I can stop anytime I want," you slur at Dave one day.

"I wonder if your - our - Mom would be proud of you," Dave says back.

_How the mighty hath fallen_, the sober part of you thinks. You wonder if she'd actually be proud of you, if she saw you right now.

[you don't think so]

v.

You look in the mirror one day.

You look just like her.


End file.
